Out of the Mist
by Cerulean Pen
Summary: Ian Malcolm's oldest child, the docile and ever-curious Misty, deliberately disobeys her father and stows away on the helicopter to Jurassic Park. What's in store for her on the island may be more than she bargained for… rewrite of "Stowaway".
1. Chapter One: Apprehensions

Out of the Mist

Summary: Ian Malcolm's oldest child, Misty, deliberately disobeys her father's wishes and stows away on the helicopter to Jurassic Park. What's in store for her on the island may be more than she bargained for… rewrite of "Stowaway".

English Adventure/Friendship Rated: T Chapters: Words:

**a/n: **oh yeah hey it's me *gets pelted with tomatoes and other various wastes*

Yeah, I know I totally abandoned this archive and "Stowaway" and moved on to bigger and better things, yada yada yada, but I was rereading "Stowaway" a couple of days ago in the wake of rewatching the movie and I was like "wow this is utter and complete shit" and I decided it deserved a rewrite. A lot of new beginnings here. Less shitty characterization, cleaner writing, quicker pacing (probably). So, if you like "Stowaway", you'll probably read this and be like "oh, wow, 'Stowaway' sucked ass from here to Isla Nublar'."

Explanation behind this chapter: So, Alan and Ellie were flown to the coast of California by a private jet (they came from Choteau) to a heliport. Ian Malcolm, who lives in California, drove directly to the heliport. This is the copter that takes the Mystery Gang directly to Isla Nublar (clearing this shit up because it was hella wrong in the original story).

Things to expect: swearing, gore, violence, PG-13 conversations, animal cruelty, claustrophobia, mentions of anxiety, mentions of vomit, mentions of child abuse, Velociraptors, hurricanes, OC's, Malcolm snark, Murphy sibling coddling, bad jokes, even worse jokes.

Chapter One:

Apprehension

_"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void but out of chaos."- Mary Shelley_

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Ian Malcolm was his name and mathematics was his game.

While others struggled with their pocket calculators, Ian bravely figured and refigured in a field where most feared to tread. He dabbled in the butterfly effect, occasionally writing papers on the subject when the mood took him. Whenever the chaos theory was debated, his iterations were among the first to be referred to. His wardrobe and his coffee were invariably black; if and when he felt compelled to drink, his martinis were dry and his vodka was on the rocks, of course.

But it was not his arithmetical prowess nor his idiosyncrasies that had earned him a spot on John Hammond's "Team of Experts". It was because he was cheap. Dreadfully cheap, in fact. The goddamn lawyer, Gennaro, had hired him under Hammond's authority without doing any research on his career. Hammond needed a mathematician and so Gennaro got him one. Ian Malcolm was his name and mathematics was his game.

He had sold out. Malcolm had met Hammond once, while InGen's mega-aquarium was being constructed in Florida, in the midst of a mildly anarchic meeting on the subject of figure projection. Neither one of them were particularly fond of the other, but Malcolm was under dire circumstances and, unfortunately, dire circumstances called for dire solutions. So he shook Gennaro's clammy hand and took the goddamn check and went home in a terrible mood.

Damn, he had sold out. Five wives ago, he had oppressed himself to never succumb to a smug businessman like Hammond. That was before he ended up with three kids who had to be fed. He took the goddamn check and bought a birthday gift two months overdue for his middle child. The jubilant glint in her eyes entirely compensated for selling out.

Ian Malcolm was his name and selling out was his game.

The sell out himself had both hands on the wheel like a nervous teenager afraid of missing even a mark on their driving test. As he navigated the freeway that would escort him directly to the middle of nowhere, Malcolm hummed and tapped and chewed. He was feeling quite anxious and not because of Hammond- - bastard extraordinaire- - or his leech of an island. Ian had recently quit the bottle. Well, three-fourths of the bottle. Spending time with the bastard extraordinaire himself was not an effort to be soberly undertaken.

His last wife had left seven months ago. Malcolm, surprising himself, had liked her, liked her a hell lot more than his past few better halves. The cycle of bitter drinking and hard number crunching had lasted far longer than usual, and his children had noticed. Misty, his oldest daughter, had caught a woman slipping down the stairs in the early hours and confronted him quietly. It had been so damn quiet and considered. Though he was reluctant to acknowledge his drinking as an issue, Ian had surreptitiously been proud of her maturity. She had sat there with her hands folded and her lips pursed like a little adult instead of a fifteen-year-old girl who collected plastic dinosaurs.

Malcolm almost wished he had acquiesced to her pleas to accompany him on this weekend excursion. Hammond's park was one of the dinosaur variety and his girl had dinosaurs on the brain. While the trip had been looming over their heads for the past week, everything came to a boil last night.

_ Misty plunged her hands into the sudsy depths of the kitchen basin and extracted a streaky casserole dish. Her mouth was pinched. "I think I'm being pretty reasonable here, Dad. It's not like I'm a kid that's gonna get in trouble. I can take care of myself."_

_ "I'm not doubting you, honey," Malcolm replied from the dinette table. He had the number cruncher out, but his spreadsheets had been replaced by tax receipts. An ice-encrusted beer rested on a coaster nearby. It was only his third this week. "I don't know why you'd want to come anyway. It'll just be math and blueprints and maybe a tour of the place. I'm trying to spare you the suffering."_

_ "Oh, come on Dad." The girl unearthed her brother's rubber sippy cup from the mound of soap; scuds of foam clung to its nib. "You're exaggerating. I mean, it's a dinosaur park! You know- -"_

_ "Of course I know. Misty, I'm ninety-percent sure your first word was 'stegosaurus'. But this isn't the same kind of thing. It's math. You hate math. You knocked on my door last week to tell me that math is a waste of time and that you were going to acquire a DeLorean so you could erase math from history. I don't want you to be disappointed, honey."_

_ Misty stewed a minute more as she stacked dishes in the cabinets. It was one of the many responsibilities she assumed whenever the household was deprived of a Malcolm wife. Once the sink was cleared and scrubbed, she returned to the table and sat across from her father. "Dad. I'm devoting all my strength into not throwing a tantrum. Really."_

_ Ian glanced up from the documents and oppressed himself not to smirk at the sight of her delightfully childish glowering. She had inherited his obstinacy, along with his nearsightedness and unruly mop of dark curls. They leveled their gazes, tacitly challenging the other to yield. _

_ It was Misty who looked away. The hurt in her expression was sharp and unfeigned; Ian almost conceded in that instant. "What time do you leave tomorrow?"_

_ "Nine in the a.m., baby." He rose to his feet and kissed her brow. The half-drained beer was tossed into the recycling bin; Misty's gimlet eyes didn't leave him until the bottle was gone. It was exceedingly difficult to part ways with an unfinished beer, but Ian cared too damn much about his kids to be led astray by booze. Kids could do that to a guy. _

_ Misty smiled, albeit faintly. "Are we done here?"_

_ "I'll bring you a souvenir." _

Malcolm swung onto the freeway's last exit and sighed aloud. Despite maintaining confidence in his decision to venture out alone, Misty would have definitely been excellent company. Kelly, however spunky and gregarious, tended to be contentious too, and their arguments were known to escalate into downright feuds. Roger was only four, although he was already developing quite a personality. It never ceased to astonish him that his kids had gotten so damn smart. Unfortunately for him, this "blessing" had a tendency to get said kids and himself in trouble.

Still, Ian smiled. It would be great to return home on Sunday and see them again. He would have another figurine for Misty's collection and maybe some of those ponytail elastics for Kelly and a stuffed stego for Roger, and he'd do it all without a woman. He sped towards the rickety little heliport with his attitude improved and his anxiety quelled.

Ian Malcolm, preoccupied with thoughts of his daughter and his career and his flask tucked safely into the breast pocket of his black jacket, failed to notice the perfectly bland SUV that had been tailing him on the freeway had turned on the same exit and was still following him.

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Ian Malcolm parked in the fallow lot outside the chintzy port's single launch pad. The SUV did the same.

The driver patiently waited for Malcolm to cross the stretch of land to the private helicopter, which had the cerulean InGen insignia stenciled on its glossy exterior. He was met by a balding man in ill-fitting khaki shorts. Once the two men boarded the dragonfly, she decided she was out of the woods and stepped out of her vehicle. She was a tall, lean girl, whose muscled arms and sharp features were offset by her bookish eyeglasses and unruly ponytail. A violet knapsack dangled from one square shoulder.

"Okay," she whispered to herself. Her heart was cantering along like a tireless racehorse and her hands were trembling violently. The girl bit her knuckles rapaciously to steady them, but her pulse continued to gallop. She chalked it up to anxiety, coerced herself to breathe, and walked towards the jet.

Misty Ava Malcolm was her name and sneaking out was her game.

As of today, at least, it was her game. She had always been a docile child who allowed herself to be conditioned with consequences and incentives. Whatever was asked of her was done immediately. To her younger siblings, she was a mother; to her single father, she was a partner. Misty had submitted herself to fifteen years of unrelenting responsibility and duty, and had never asked for anything in return.

Until today. Misty had been reasonable. There was no absurdity to be found in her request: Misty was a self-sufficient girl that could have contributed her own analysis of Hammond's prehistoric enterprise. To accompany her father on this little sojourn would not harm nor inconvenience a single soul. Yet he said no, pulling the plug on her dreams, and left her in that kitchen to sulk- - and plan.

She wasn't necessarily proud of herself for rebelling. Ian had as much right as anyone to say "no" (even if he was being unfair) and she despised disappointing him. No lecture or punishment would be as terrible as the goddamn _disappointment _in his expression once he realized what she had done.

Misty suddenly halted in her tracks and stared down the copter, which glinted like a tarnished dime under the hot slashes of mid-morning sunlight. Her heart was trip hammering frantically against the wall of her throat. There was time to abandon her scheme, to scramble back into her SUV and speed home and care for her siblings in the place of the sitter she had hired.

There was also time to get on the damn helicopter and follow her dreams.

Misty came within a few feet of the dragonfly and crouched down so she was no longer visible through the copter's side windows. She circled around the cockpit, moving clumsily on her hands and knees, until she reached the passenger door. To her immense relief, an opaque partition divided the pit from the interior: she wouldn't be caught until they landed.

A middle-aged man sporting a pair of smoked amber sunglasses was seated behind the controllers. Misty rapped on the window. The man reached across the cramped cockpit to unlatch the door for her; after a brief struggle with the gummy lock, she wrenched it open. He artfully extracted his lit cigarette and exhaled a spiral of smoke scant inches from her face. "The hell're you looking for, sweetie?"

Misty drew herself up to her full height and glared at the pilot with her steely grey eyes. According to her father, her gaze could curl an iron nail. "I'm Misty, Ian Malcolm's daughter. There's not enough room in the copter for me, so Hammond told me to ride up here. Said you wouldn't have a problem with it."

Her reference to Hammond sapped the man of his hostility. He pushed his sunglasses onto the prominent ledge of his forehead and smiled like a child that had just been caught playing with Mommy's makeup. "I-I'm so sorry, Miss Malcolm! Mr. Hammond didn't tell me… I-I hope you understand."

"Of course I do." She slid into the passenger seat, which was about as comfortable as the bleachers in a high school gymnasium. The knapsack went between her knees. "So, we're going straight to the island?"

"That's right, kid. Mr. Hammond didn't wanna keep you guys waiting He's all about this park thing, says you're in for the time of your lives." He tucked his cigarette back into one corner of his mouth, flipped a switch on the gargantuan dashboard that occupied at least one half of the tiny cockpit, and extended his callused hand to his new traveling companion. "Name's Jason, by the way. Jason Newhart."

"Nice to meet you, Jason," Misty replied pleasantly, shaking the offered hand. After nearly frightening the man to death, she believed a little courtesy was in order. "How long have you been working for InGen?"

"InGen? Oh, a couple years. Mostly just flying helicopters. I usually don't even cart around big wigs like Hammond, but Ronnie- - he's the usual guy- - busted his foot and can't come into work. So it's yours truly today."

Misty nodded as if interested by his tale, but she didn't share much sympathy for Ronnie or his busted foot. She was intrigued by Jason's acute fear of Hammond. Anyone who was even remotely involved in paleontology was aware of John Hammond's financial monopoly on the field. He funded only a handful of digs each year and was reputed to withdraw his support when things didn't go his way. Her father had christened him "bastard extraordinaire", which had once seemed rather cruel- - now, Misty suspected there was a grain of truth in Ian's bitterness.

Jason reached down and unhooked his handheld radio from the console; its coil of cord swayed. "We ready to go, Mr. Hammond?"

The only response Misty perceived was a harsh staccato of static, but Jason started the dragonfly up anyway. She watched as he manipulated the dizzying system of levers and buttons, awed by his effortless dexterity. With a deep rumble, the helicopter rose a few feet and then lurched forward as if yanked by an invisible rope. Great mushroom clouds of dust blotted out their view of the heliport.

"G'bye California, hello Isla Nublar!" Jason shouted in an unexpected fit of zeal. The copter rocked uncertainly in the air a moment before ascending into the sky like an unfettered balloon. All at once, Misty's car was reduced to a glimmering speck of steel, the heliport a doll house plunked deep in a child's sandbox. She felt both nauseated and exhilarated, and hollered her own farewell in the heat of the moment.

"Here I come, Isla Nublar!"

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Misty Ava Malcolm was her name and riding in helicopters was definitely not her game.

She had been appropriately nervous upon take-off, even apprehensive, and refused to even glimpse out her window at the doll-like landscapes below. Jason had assured her this was an ordinary reaction to her first flight and told her to relax. As good-intentioned as his advice had been, Misty was having quite some difficulty relaxing.

They had left the safety of land a few minutes ago and were now traversing the vast, undulating ocean. It frightened her to know that if they were suddenly afflicted with engine trouble, they would plummet directly into the water. The mere notion of the rickety little copter attempting to brave the harsh swells drew a sour sweat to the surface of her skin. She pushed her glasses back up on the freckled bridge of her nose and swallowed the bile slithering up her throat. Isla Nublar had never seemed so far.

The dragonfly encountered a pocket of wind and rocked threateningly. Misty pressed herself against the seat, eyes wide with fear. _I guess I can add heights and helicopters to the ol' list of fears, _she thought grimly. She attempted to laugh at herself, but the sound that escaped her was squawky and strange.

Jason tapped her shoulder and gestured to the noise-cancelling headphones he had given her once the blades started their cacophonous song; she slid them onto her neck. "We'll be landing in about five minutes!" he shouted over the stentorian roar. "Make sure your seatbelt's nice and tight!"

Misty nodded and replaced the phones before any irrevocable damage could be inflicted on her aching ear drums. He didn't need to worry: her seatbelt had already been fascinated as securely as possible. Still, she yanked on the adjustment strip until her pelvis went numb. One could really never be too cautious.

True to Jason's word, a blip soon appeared on the mundane horizon. It was as if someone had stuck a lustrous emerald deep in the sea; Misty had never beheld such vibrant greens in her life. As the helicopter drew nearer, she could perceive the defined shapes of tree canopies and moss draperies. The sight of land sedated her, even reawakened her initial enthusiasm. Her heart skipped a beat and she bit her knuckle rapaciously to prevent herself from grinning like a child.

The dragonfly finally soared overtop the jewel-like island, stirring the furthermost layers of vegetation. Misty watched the flora surround them in awe. It was as if they were descending into a lush canyon. She briefly contemplated why a fun park would require such fantastic and verdant scenery when there were rides and prize booths to catch the eye.

With a thick growl, the copter paused in mid-air and then dropped like a malfunctioned elevator. She shrieked in spite of herself. Jason chuckled out of the tail of her eye. Misty might have played the John Hammond card again had they not touched down on the concrete landing pad and finally droned to a halt.

She gazed uncomprehendingly at the sprawling road ahead, her pulse frantic against the bony cuff of her wrist. There had not been a single hiccup in her plan. Everything had worked and now she was about to spend a weekend with the one subject she loved so dearly.

Misty was in Jurassic Park.

**a/n: **Slow exposition chapter. Like I said, the writing is cut down to be much cleaner and simpler- - more like a Crichton novel, really, with King influence. Anyway, I'm keeping "Stowaway" up for reference, or at least until I become overcome with disgust for it. Hope you guys enjoy and are ready to go back on the adventure with me.


	2. Chapter Two: Cracks

Chapter Two:

Cracks

**a/n: **I just woke up covered in fried rice, but I had an idea for the chapter. Props to the guys who figured out what was going on and followed this story. I hope you enjoy it. (In other news, you better appreciate this tame stuff while it's here, there's gonna be excessive Murphy sibling coddling in the near future.)

Doctor Alan Grant was a man of science, not a man of theme park entertainment.

He hadn't been enthralled by John Hammond's proposal, not even with the generous endowment staked to it. The idea of an entire park centered on the species he so loved was wrong, almost insidious. Aside from their dignified presence in museums, Alan felt there was no place for dinosaurs in the public world. People, collectively, failed to show respect for them. They were far too inclined to mold them out of cheap plastic and stick them into cereal boxes. Hammond's park would doubtlessly be the same.

The fact he was sacrificing valuable time did not improve his sullen outlook on the damn thing. Alan had never abandoned his colleagues in the midst of a discovery before and was not especially keen to leave that precious Velociraptor skeleton in the green hands of his less-experienced students. Hammond had insisted though and Alan, with hundreds of thousands of equally precious dollars hanging over him, was in no position to quarrel.

Hammond was just one of the many passengers occupying the immaculate, but cramped, interior of the helicopter en route to Isla Nublar. Seated across from him was Ian Malcolm, a bespectacled man clad entirely in black. Alan had known him for all of forty-five minutes and disliked him immensely. Men like Malcolm were all too predictable: lewd, arrogant, bodacious. The bold manner in which he flirted with Ellie was enough to make his skin crawl.

The other man on the bench was the lawyer, Gennaro. Alan remembered Hammond expressing his contempt towards lawyers- - Gennaro in particular- - and could not help but agree. Gennaro was glancing around as if he would rather off himself than spend another minute with the lot of them.

Ellie gave his callused hand a squeeze and smiled sweetly once he had shaken himself out of his reverie. Just a glimpse of her gentle visage dispelled his irritation. She tended to have such an effect on him. "Almost there," she whispered, her enthusiasm youthful and unfeigned.

"You seem excited."

"Because I'm not dreading it like you, sweetie." Her thumb rubbed the tough skin of his knuckle; the sensation made his nerves do the jitterbug. "It can't be _that _bad."

"No place out in the middle of the ocean in need of a paleontologist and a paleobotanist can be that _good, _either," he replied. She shook her head, still grinning, and unfolded her stunning legs; Malcolm noticed and began to study said legs with the observant eye of a professional sexual predator. Alan's disdain toward the man escalated.

The island came into view suddenly, as if it had materialized from the ocean void while they had their backs turned. Its lushness was overwhelming. Alan stared in simultaneous awe and curiosity: the most plant life he had seen in the past year was the smattering of wilting scrub out in the badlands. This place was a veritable paradise.

As they drew nearer, Alan's scorn started to dissipate like a passing thunderhead. There was something strangely soothing about the island, a sense of ethereal calm intimated by its misty peaks and luxuriant vegetation. He had been expecting something much different. A Disney World perhaps, complete with a cartoonish dinosaur mascot greeting guests at the gate.

Maybe Ellie was right. Maybe the trip wasn't _that _bad.

"Bad wind shears, so we're going to have to drop a little fast," Hammond announced, tapping his amber-tipped cane along with each word. His expression conveyed a childish delight Alan had never witnessed on a man his age.

As if on cue, the copter jerked down and back up like a hooked fish. Alan reached for his seatbelt and came up with two latches- - no buckles. The dragonfly bounced again, more violently, forcing Alan to knot the two around his waist in a slapdash excuse for a safety belt. He caught Ellie's eye and gestured to his work; she laughed out loud.

The helicopter descended into a picturesque site: sprawling trees, verdant grasses, even a miniature waterfall. Two Jeeps were awaiting their arrival at the helipad, which was connected to a narrow road that extended into the island's leafy depths.

The copter landed without a single bounce or skid. They were in Jurassic Park.

"Come on now, come on! Let's go!" Hammond chirped. A deeply tanned man came to the door and opened it for the group. His salmon Polo shirt had "Jurassic Park" embroidered onto the breast pocket in black thread. "Thank you David- - come on, let's go!"

Alan looked to Ellie for wisdom. "You heard him- - let's go!" She snatched his hand and all but dragged him out of the passenger compartment and onto the concrete helipad. He removed his khaki hat before it could be cast into the greenery by the copter's blades and clutched it to his chest. Ellie had expressed her hatred of said hat on several occasions, often by comparing it to a cheap facsimile of Indiana Jones's, but Alan refused to part with it. The hat had been his only protection from sunburn when he crashed his Jeep in the badlands two years ago and became stranded in the arid desert with four of his ribs badly crushed. It was a lucky charm and even Ellie couldn't coax him out of abandoning a charm.

They were approaching the parked Jeeps when Alan spotted a tall figure out of the tail of his eye- - a girl. She was slumped against the copter's cockpit, observing them behind a pair of copper-rimmed eyeglasses. Alan paused and was about to mention her to Ellie when Ian Malcolm nearly mowed him. In an instant, the man was upon her and had her by the collar of her denim button-down.

"What in the...?" Hammond limped forward, evidently irritated by the delay. He had been anticipating this moment for weeks now and wasn't about to let Ian Malcolm of all men blight it for him. "Doctor Malcolm, I _insist _that we- -"

"And _I_ insist that we hang on a second," Malcolm snapped. Gone was his smarmy smirk, replaced by something dark that reminded Alan of a cloud eclipsing the sun on a summer afternoon. It was an odd thing to see. "Come on Misty, you're getting on the helicopter."

"Wait! Wait, Dad- - _please! Let go of me!" _Her sandy voice sawed through the tranquility of the day and provided a window of opportunity for her to shake herself free of her father's grasp. The two glared at each other, father and daughter, daring one another to act.

Alan entertained a single thought: _Ian Malcolm has a child? Someone allowed this man to have a child?_

"Dad. I was reasonable last night and I'm being reasonable now. I respect you and your decisions, but I can't take this. You know how much I'd love it here- - and I do! It's amazing! I've done nothing but work my whole life. Who takes care of the house while you're out on the weekends? Who watches the kids and puts them to bed?" The mature facade she was valiantly struggling to maintain began to slip; her lower lip trembled and her voice cracked. "I'm sorry, Dad. I really am. But I feel like I deserved this."

Ian couldn't help but gawk at his child as her throat hitched around a suppressed sob. She had never been so passionate about anything before, not her textbooks or her classes: This was the Real Deal for her. He had to admit he had been a mite unfair as well, even if it was crucial to his role as a father to _be_ unfair, and that Misty had always assumed the position of Mommy Dearest when it needed to be filled. The damn kid only wanted this _one _thing...

He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn, was he a sell-out. "Okay, Misty. I can't say I'm overjoyed about this or the fact you snuck onto a helicopter, but if you _really _want to stay... I guess you can."

Misty thrust her brawny arms around her significantly less brawny father, burying her face into his chest. "Thank you, Dad! Thank you, thank you! I promise- - I'll never ask for anything ever again! No more Christmas or-or birthdays, nothing! Thank you!"

"Okay, okay..." Ian chuckled and smoothed his hand down the arc of her back. He had a fatal soft spot for the kid: she was his first, after all. In spite of her lip-biting anxiety and perennially short temper, she was the most responsible member of their abnormal and chronically irresponsible family. Vacationing with her wouldn't be a chore- - it would be a reprieve.

Of course, it would probably make flirting with Doctor Sattler a touch awkward.

"Why, who's this young lady?" Hammond inquired. He quite liked the idea of receiving feedback from a teenager.

Misty felt herself redden. No one had ever called her a young lady before: her muscular build and unsocial demeanor were not what one would call "ladylike". "Um, I'm Misty. And-and you must be Mister Hammond."

"John Hammond, please." The man limped forward and shook her hand briskly. "Oh, quite a grip! Now, Miss Malcolm, I'm sure that you're excited to see the park. I'm sure anyone who would get on a helicopter by themselves would be excited, right?" He chuckled at his own wit before giving her hand a gentle tug. "Come along! Come along, we don't have any time to waste!"

Misty shot her father a quizzical glance; he rolled his eyes in reply. Ian wasn't so easily fooled by Hammond's "kindly old grandfather" performance. The bastard extraordinaire was still a bastard, with or without the quirky little cane.

Alan watched Hammond lead the two along, still a tad befuddled by the whole spectacle. He was still shocked Ian had a child- - more than one too, if the girl's speech was any clue- - and that said child would climb aboard a helicopter against her father's wishes to visit John Hammond's park. Hell, he didn't even know kids still _liked _dinosaurs that much these days.

"You sure you don't want a kid, sweetie? We could have one like that," Ellie said as she climbed into the passenger seat. He settled in the back and buckled in. This seatbelt, to his relief, worked.

"A kid who'd risk their life to break the rules? No thank you." Alan was not particularly fond of children. Even teenagers aggravated him.

"I think it's sweet. I can imagine someone _else _pulling a stunt like that to see a dinosaur park," she sang. He attempted to scowl, but his mouth rebelled and curled into an amused grin. If Ellie ever _did _persuade him into rearing a child, Alan hoped he or she inherited her unique personality and sunny disposition.

Ian slid into the backseat, still gnawing away on his gum. Alan had quickly grown to despise his incessant chewing (among several other things he hadn't the time to list). "Hope you enjoyed that little family feud," he said cheerfully to Alan, smirking that hateful, arrogant smirk.

"Dad, it wasn't a feud." Misty wedged herself into the sliver of space remaining in the Jeep's overcrowded rear and removed her eyeglasses to polish them with the tail of her shirt. Once she had replaced them, she quickly evaluated her two new traveling companions: a gorgeous, bespectacled blonde woman and a flagrantly irritated, suntanned man. She was attempting to organize impressions when it dawned on her- - she recognized the man.

"You're staring, honey," Ian chastised.

"I know him," Misty whispered back.

"Doctor Grant, my daughter appears to know you," Ian announced in the hopes he would mortify his child. As predicted, a dull blush crept up her neck and colored her freckled cheeks an unattractive shade of scarlet. Teenaged girls were quite easy to embarrass.

"Doctor Grant..." Misty's heart started cantering along in her chest like a spooked racehorse. She read his book as often as possible and was a fierce supporter of his theories. The mere notion of sharing a room with him, let alone a Jeep, was enough to reduce her to a quivering mess. Misty despised people who affected her in such a manner. "Uh, it-it's wonderful to meet you. Your book is one of the most, um, fascinating accounts of V-Velociraptor breeding I've ever read."

_ I really hope he thinks I'm smart and that I'm not the kind of girl who laughs so hard at her own jokes that she falls down and hits her head on the stove, _she thought desperately.

"Well… thank you."

Misty twisted away from him and gazed out the window as the Jeep began to navigate the sinuous road. Nothing irked her more than feeling embarrassed. Embarrassment was weak, pathetic. She had no patience for it.

"Honey, I was just overcome with a single, horrible thought: Did you leave Kelly and Roger with anyone? Any food? Or are they just locked in their rooms?" Ian asked, not bothering to mask the note of concern in his voice. Roger was just a toddler after all and Kelly, just four years his senior, was no more experienced.

"Yes, Dad. I left my dear brother and sister in the cold, empty house without a crumb in the cabinet," Misty deadpanned. She was quickly set back on the straight and narrow by a single icy glance. "I left them with Michael Wright, ya know, the boy who used to sit for us. They're fine."

"I don't appreciate sarcasm, Misty. Only when it's coming from me."

"Yes, sir."

.

.

Alan Grant was becoming impatient. The Jeeps had been trundling along for almost twenty minutes now, traversing gravelly roads and venturing past the perimeter fence, the latter studded with signs that proclaimed "Ten-Thousand Volts". He had seen plenty of foliage- - which Ellie was ardently studying- - and distant structures, but none of the attractions Hammond had raved about. In fact, Isla Nublar appeared to be nothing more than an island, a heavily guarded island at that.

To make matters worse, Ian Malcolm absolutely refused to shut up. Alan liked to think of himself as a patient man, but if he heard that man open his goddamn mouth again, he was leaping out of the Jeep. He almost pitied the kid for having to tolerate a garrulous, bullshit-spouting man.

The kid was an odd specimen as well. Alan was not surprised by her reference to his book: nearly every damn Dino Kid (Ellie's affectionate name for paleontology-obsessed youth) had gotten their hands on it. Most Dino Kids, however, were much younger and… well, gawky. Misty looked more like his male colleagues, who were perpetually flexing their muscles and volunteering to lift bulky equipment so the girls would notice them. If one subtracted her eyeglasses and the childish space in her front teeth, she could probably pass for a hopeful Olympian.

The Jeeps suddenly ground to a halt in an unsuspecting meadow. Alan was almost jolted out of his seat. As he started to rearrange himself, he became aware of a nebulous presence, as massive and unformulated as a galaxy. He twisted to his left and saw it.

"This species has been extinct since the Cretaceous period, I can't believe- -" Ellie felt a hand come down on her blonde bun and coerce her head to turn. "What? What, Alan- -?" She saw it.

Misty bent down to scoop up her backpack when it struck her: something was nearby. She could sense the other occupants in the vehicle drawn to the object, like moons around some vast planet. Shaking, she glanced up and saw it.

A Brachiosaur was roaming the emerald plain, as idle and docile as a common milk cow. Instead of grazing, it was exploring the canopies of nearby trees for tender leaves. It was not an illustration or rendering or skeleton: the Brachiosaur was here and real. Dinosaurs had returned from the dead.

"This… This is a dinosaur," Alan stammered. He had practically tossed himself out of the vehicle and was observing the long-necked beast with an awed grin. Though Brachiosaurs were gentle herbivores that would no sooner burst into song than chow down on humans, Alan maintained a safe distance. Clandestinely, he felt as though the dinosaur would vanish like an apparition if he attempted to touch its scaly hide or peer into its flat-toothed jaw.

"Dad! Dad, lookit! Dad, it-it's…" Misty grabbed her father's hand and was squeezing his palm with each exclamation. Her grey eyes had taken on a jubilant glint that Ian hadn't witnessed since she unwrapped her first dinosaur figurine. He wondered if she would weep with joy.

"He did it. That crazy son-of-a-bitch did it," he marveled. Ian watched his daughter spill out of the Jeep and trot toward the doctors, stupefied. She loved the damn beasts.

He just had the strangest sensation that her affection wouldn't last much longer.

**a/n: **I guess this is a decent-ish place to cut shit off. I didn't mean for this chapter to get so fucking boring, but wHATEVER, I'll have plenty of time to work on the rest of the story over the summer. The future chapters are going to get longer and more whatever. (In other news, my life has been fucking eviscerated by Joseph Mazzello's filmography.) Have a good one.


	3. Chapter Three: Defects

Chapter Three:

Defects

**a/n: **you know what I love? fucking dinosaurs. you know what this stupid-ass part of the movie has? a distinct dearth of fucking dinosaurs. I'm gonna try to condense all the foreshadowing into this chapter so we can get to the good shit next chapter. oh and just so you know this isn't a rigid, by-the-movie story. it combines elements of the film and the book, along with a LOT of altering and scene changes. k? cool. enjoy.

To the group's joint surprise, Alan was the only one who fainted.

Admittedly, Misty had expected herself to lose consciousness once it became apparent that this dinosaur, among several others, was quite real. She had felt lightheaded and even had to extract her inhaler from the pocket of her shorts for a quick puff (which seemed to, regrettably, only ramify her dorkiness). But it was Alan who swooned upon being informed that Jurassic Park was also the home of a living Tyrannosaurus Rex. Before Misty could imagine the millions of little boys who would collectively piss themselves at the sight of a real Rex, Doctor Grant began to collapse.

_ Oh my God, what am I witnessing?_ Misty stepped forward to help, then immediately stepped back. She had learned a great deal about fainting at her First-Aid class, but that certainly did not prepare her for dealing with an overjoyed and weak-kneed paleontologist. Out of the corner of her eye, her father smirked at the sight.

"P-Put your head between your knees, honey." Ellie helped her fiancé to the grass and gently pushed down on his shoulders. Alan would have waved her away had he possessed the strength; instead, he gazed out at the expansive, verdant plains. Packs of dinosaurs were roaming the fields, as content as a flock of sheep grazing in their pasture (if not a touch speedier and meaner). "Herds… they do move in herds."

John Hammond was practically bursting with pride at his test audience's reaction. He had anticipated excitement, of course, but… well, not excitement at Doctor Grant's degree. With a grandeur sweep of his cane, he uttered the words he had been waiting to say for the past decade: "Doctor Grant, my dear Doctor Sattler, young Misty… Welcome to Jurassic Park."

A fresh wave of reality swept over Alan and he found himself able to collect his wits. Hammond hadn't just been a finicky benefactor: he had been the brainchild behind… _this. _InGen had somehow extracted these beasts from the pages of textbooks and breathed life into their once dormant lungs (lungs! Did they have lungs?) Still awash in awe, Alan proposed the question on everyone's mind. "How'd you do this?"

Hammond smiled. "I'll show you."

.

.

"Dad, this is real. This is a real thing that's really happening. For real."

"Now, are you telling me it's real?" Ian Malcolm teased. His daughter laughed, which was a welcome change from the typical eye-rolling he got from her after a sarcastic comment, and rested her head on his shoulder. Surprised, he gently situated a hand on her crown. They hadn't been this close since she was a child and had to sleep in the master bed with him in case her breathing went sluggish during the night.

"But really," she sighed contentedly, "this is amazing. I had no idea that this was possible. I mean, I'm sure you had no idea this was happening. You thought Hammond was just a bas- -"

"Not in front of the guests, honey."

"Sorry, a, um… shyster? Is that a word? Whatever, you thought he was just a cheat. But look!" She pointed out the Jeep's window. Stout, rodent-like figments flickered spectrally between crops of artfully arranged brush. "He actually brought them back to life! They're real!"

"It's a Compy. _Procompsognathus." _Alan had joined them at the window; he caught Misty's eye and tapped a finger against the glass. "There seems to be a lot of 'em. I don't know what they're doing in the forest like that…"

"Alan, look at that!" Ellie exclaimed from the passenger seat. She twisted against her safety belt and gave Alan's sleeve an urgent tug. "There's flora here from the _Triassic _Period. Some of its poison Alan, and it's just _out _here. If this park really does open, what if a kid tries to touch it? Or worse? Did they do _any _research?"

"Hammond's people? I don't know- -"

"A bastard like Hammond would probably let the T-Rex carry park guests around in its mouth," Ian interrupted, voice marred with false delight. He chuckled at himself; Misty rolled her eyes. Thus was the bond between them.

"Give him a little slack, Dad. I mean, he helped build this place. Maybe it's just a mix-up," Misty added with a nod towards Ellie. The woman smiled, albeit uncertainly, and turned forward in her seat again. She wasn't entirely convinced though. John Hammond hadn't struck her as the sort to be particularly concerned with the placement of plants and their affects on humans. It just sickened her to envision the suffering a child would endure if he or she blithely collected a fistful of those toxic leaves.

The pair of Jeeps wound around the corner and trundled down an unpaved road that unfurled beyond Misty's realm of sight. She glanced up at the building they were approaching and was suddenly frightened. It was a modern structure, a gleaming conglomeration of angles and beige and polish, but something about its stark juxtaposition against the luxuriant landscape marbled her skin with goose bumps. With a shudder, she rubbed her forearm, adjusted her glasses, and stepped out of the stalled vehicle.

Hammond limped over to the party, disgruntled lawyer in tow. The elderly man could have tossed his cane aside and danced a jig he was so excited. "Come along! We have so much to see! I'm sure you're all curious to see how this, ah, little project works!" _Curious? Doctor Grant would probably snap my dad's neck and wear his head as a trophy if it meant he could see how this works, _Misty thought. Despite the thought's absurdity, she cut her eyes to the paleontologist and stepped between him and her father.

"G'day, g'day, g'day!" Hammond greeted his workers with all the mirth of a Sunday School teacher welcoming her class. There was about a dozen men, attired in salmon dress shirts, exiting and entering through a massive sheet of plastic tacked to the lobby's missing back wall. Aside from the ongoing construction, the lobby was beautiful: sun-drenched, commodious, steeped in opulent splendor that rivaled the natural treasures outside. In its center, a Tyrannosaurus Rex stood, jaws bared and tiny forelimbs posed to grab. Unlike its siblings, this dinosaur was made of bone and steel wire.

"Dad, look! It's a male T-Rex skeleton!" Misty rushed over to the display. Ian smiled at his daughter's enthusiasm, then aimed said smile toward the extremely pretty Doctor Sattler. She was gazing up at the Rex's football-sized teeth with perceptible awe, visage bathed in the golden slants of sunlight. Every wisp of her blonde hair glowed with individual cadence. God, was she beautiful.

Ellie noticed his stare and reciprocated the smile. "Misty's really interested, isn't she?"

"Oh, oh, definitely. Although, not as interested as I am in you, Doctor Sattler," he said matter-of-factly. Her cheeks went pink as her button-down shirt, but she didn't disagree with his sentiment. A bemused twinkle sparked in her baby blue eyes.

Hammond led the group to the steel staircase that spiraled around the Rex. It took Ellie a moment to register the new direction of her party and she quickly caught up with Alan. He didn't seem particularly pleased. To lighten his spirits, she gave his hand another squeeze; this gesture got his heart thumping hard again. "So, honey, what do you think?"

Alan stole a glance at the T-Rex display, so similar to the ones he had unearthed back in Montana, and shook his head. "I think we're out of a job." "Don't you mean extinct?" Ian called out in reply. Ellie sensed a fresh wave of hatred come off her fiancé.

The visitors were shepherded into a small, dim theater, ornately furnished with plush carpets and velvet seats. A blank screen occupied the entire front wall. Misty shot her father a glance; he merely shrugged. "Can't expect him to pull out all the big guns at the beginning," Ian whispered as they took their seats.

"I thought we were getting a behind the scenes look, not an educational video," she murmured. She bit her knuckle in spite of herself.

Hammond moved to the head of the theater and looked expectantly at the display. Sure enough, Hammond himself strolled into frame, cane in hand. "Hello, John!"

"Hello, John!" the virtual man chirped. The real Hammond gestured for his enthralled and slightly befuddled audience to echo the salutation; they did, if not with a mite less enthusiasm.

"How are you?"

"Oh, fine, fine, but… uh, how'd I get here?"

"Dad… what am I witnessing?" Misty said quietly.

"Nothing good, honey." He clapped a hand down on her knee and watched as the two bastard extraordinaires traded pointless banter. Eventually, flesh-and-blood Hammond jabbed his counter-part's finger with a pin. Ian briefly wondered if this interminable charade was about to get interesting. Unfortunately for him, nothing intriguing followed the small act of violence. An animated double-helix spiraled out of the two-dimensional man's fingertip, complete with large eyes and cartoonish front teeth.

Misty stole a glimpse of Doctor Grant. His expression could have curdled milk.

"If I wanted animation, I would've gone to Disney World," Ian declared. Judging by the volume of his voice, he had spoken with the intention of everyone hearing.

"Oh, father. For once, I agree."

.

.

Doctor Henry Wu consulted his clipboard once more, even though he had already perused the document in its entirety and committed every word of it to memory. The numbers did not falter: the dinosaur population of Jurassic Park had increased by one.

He had Caitlin print the population spreadsheets everyday as a formality, just to insure a Compy hadn't been trodden upon by its larger brethren. Wu was quite accustomed to the number decreasing by one or two- - never before had it gone up. The chart declared that there was seven Sauropods, compared to the six that had been alive the day before. Unless the document had been misprinted… dinosaurs were reproducing by themselves. Which was impossible. He had tweaked codes and woven DNA like macramé just to ensure those numbers remained in check. It had to be wrong.

"Caitlin." His intern, a sweet-faced college girl, scurried to his side. Her cloying optimism had always perturbed him: it was as if she didn't know the genetic duplicity they were engaged in. She was reliable though, if not a tad officious. "Check the system for any errors. The population spreadsheets… they're not reading right."

"Oh! Let me see…" She took the clipboard and adjusted her pink-rimmed spectacles before skimming her work. "You're right. Maybe the system just- - hey, look at that!"

Wu followed her pointing finger to the laboratory's glass wall, which typically overlooked nothing but a dishearteningly blank space. Not really a room with a view. Today though, they had company in the form of the rotating theater Hammond had told him to look for. Whenever the theater passed them, the technicians and scientists were supposed to evade eye contact and carry on robotically. Caitlin had just broke that rule.

"Caitlin, stop!" Wu hissed, snatching the clipboard back. She flinched instinctively; her ever-present smile was gone. He glanced back up at the guests and was shocked to see that the first row had been vacated. Hammond's visitors were rushing into the lab like it was their only shelter. "Oh, god damn… just-just go check the system. Okay?"

She all but sprinted into the Control Room, frenzied footsteps resonating throughout the tiled space. Wu cursed and turned his attention to the gaping group. There was Doctor Grant- - wow, how had Hammond snagged him?- - and a stunning blonde woman and a bespectacled father and daughter pair. Time to put on a good ol' fashioned suck-up show. "Ah, good day, sir."

"This is our top geneticist, Henry Wu," Hammond introduced. Before Wu could modestly insist that he wasn't the _top _geneticist (merely part of the performance: Wu _knew _the project would have collapsed without his contribution), Hammond hurried over to the central incubator. Wu bit his tongue and followed the exuberant man.

"Perfect timing, really. I'd hoped they'd hatch before I had to go to the boat."

"These were about to hatch?" The elderly man gazed lovingly at the steel and plastic nest, which was the home to about six or seven speckled eggs. Awash in the yellowish light of thermal fluorescents, they looked like oversized hen eggs. Wu opened his mouth to speak. "Henry, Henry, Henry… I've told you, I want to be present for every hatching!"

Wu sank his teeth deeper into the spongy meat of his tongue. He tasted the metallic zing of blood. "Of course, sir."

One of the eggs quivered and then expanded like a bubble. Hammond pulled a pair of disposable latex gloves from the station box, snapped them on, and gently cupped the egg in his hands. A crack raced up its dome. The egg was hatching.

"Alan, the egg's hatching!" The blonde woman seized the paleontologist's forearm as the two watched the egg shudder. Wu tried to match their excitement, but it was an arduous task for someone who had witnessed the hatching of hundreds of clutches. He reminded himself that these eggs were of Velociraptor origin and that they would begot a new flock. Hopefully, these raptors wouldn't maul one another the moment their teeth were sharp enough.

"Come on, little one! Come on…" A tiny snout poked through the shell, followed by a beady pair of eyes the size of sesame seeds. Hammond stripped the minute shards of eggshell from its scaly visage and used the rubber-clad tip of his pinky finger to clear the amniotic fluid from its mouth. He heard the paleontologists gasping in astonishment and he knew he had gotten them. "There we go, push! Push! They imprint on the first living creature they come into contact with. That helps them to trust me. I've been present for the birth of every animal on this island. Oh, just look at that."

_ Bullshit, _Wu thought darkly. The two women were fawning over the infant raptor, showering it with the affection one would show a human newborn: even Doctor Grant was pointing absently to himself, as if hoping the raptor would imprint on him instead. It was the bespectacled man who seemed indifferent to all the hullabaloo (well, him and the lawyer, but corporate lawyers tended to have a stunted sense of awe).

"Surely not the ones that have bred in the wild," the man said in regards to Hammond's speech.

Wu recognized his cue and launched into his practiced spiel. "Actually, they can't breed in the wild. Population control is one of our security precautions here. There is no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park." _Unless, of course, something went to hell in the backyard and my spreadsheet was right. _

The man was unimpressed. His daughter noticed and slowly withdrew her finger from the raptor hatchery, eyes trained on him. "How do you know they can't breed?"

Good God, Hammond had bagged a stubborn one. Wu forced himself to keep his smile unforced and tone pleasant. "Because all the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park are female. We engineered them that way." The conversation was over.

Hammond had barely freed the creature before Doctor Grant took it into his own hands and began to examine it. If these dinosaurs were real, he was going to study the systems existing above the skeletons he knew so well. "Temperature feels like a high eighties."

"Wu?"

He consulted the monitor. "Ninety-one."

A robotic arm snatched up the raptor's shell in its hinged claw. Doctor Grant regarded it with flagrant disdain, as if it had harmed him in some way. He turned his attention back to the squealing creature nestled between his palms. "Homoeothermic? It holds that temperature? Incredible."

The man with all the questions could not be sated. "But, again, how do you know they're all females? Does someone go into the park and, ah- - lift the dinosaur's skirts up?

His daughter slapped his wrist like a frustrated mother. It was a queerly comical sight. Wu was far beyond the point of humor though. Between this man's tedious questions and Hammond, he was scarcely maintaining his patience. "We control their chromosomes. It's not that difficult. All vertebrate embryos are inherently female anyway. It takes an extra hormone at the right developmental stage to create a male, and we simply deny them that."

"John, that kind of control you're attempting… it-it's not possible. If there's one thing evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers. Painfully, maybe even… dangerously, but- - and- - well… there it is." He gestured to Alan's dinosaur, which was writhing and squeaking.

Wu didn't make an effort to mask his scorn. These guests were supposed to be enraptured and astonished and all that shit: Hammond had promised him that. "You're implying that a group composed entirely of females will breed?"

The man shook his head, the corner of his mouth quirked into an arrogant smirk. "No, no, I'm simply saying… life, uh, finds a way."

Wu resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Doctor Grant continued to covet the infant and was counting its vertebrate obsessively. He turned her over on his callused palm to peer at her clawed middle toe. Frightened, the raptor cried out in a tremulous, high-pitched voice, attracting Wu's attention. "Doctor Grant, please, don't touch her like- -"

"I just wanted- -"

"Doctor Grant!"

"Fine." He set the raptor on the incubator's steel rim; she scampered around its curvature until she reached Misty. The girl gasped as the terrified creature leapt into her arms and burrowed her head into the crook of her elbow. She could feel the poor creature's thumbnail-sized heart thudding swiftly against her chest.

Doctor Grant stared at the raptor from afar a moment. "What species is this?"

"Uh- - it's a Velociraptor."

The visitors exchanged mildly horrified glances that confirmed to Wu that they knew the damage Velociraptors could inflict. Misty gently set the raptor back in the incubator, her fondness replaced with the first traces of fear. She glanced up at Wu, then back to Doctor Grant.

"You breed raptors?"

.

.

Alan Grant was a man on a mission. He had _demanded _to be shown the Velociraptor pen and no amount of Hammond's anxious twaddle could deter him. If Hammond was idiotic enough to reawaken the blood-thirstiest species from its million year sleep, he had to see where they were kept. Velociraptors were not petting zoo animals: they were the greatest hunters the world had ever known.

Misty admired his passion, but her interest in the park's raptors was wearing thin. There was an entire island of dinosaurs to explore (as well as a meal to eat). So what if there were a few Velociraptors? They were confined in a steel compound strung with electrified cables that could kill a full-grown human on contact, much less a cranky dinosaur. Why was Doctor Grant so paranoid?

"Doctor Grant? We planned to show you the raptors later, after lunch," Hammond said persistently as they ascended the Velociraptor compound's stairwell. The paleontologist didn't regard Hammond until they had reached the railed footbridge overlooking the forested depths of the cage. He leaned as far as the balustrade would allow him, dying to catch a glimpse.

Hammond was tapping his cane again- - this time, out of unease. "Doctor Grant- - as I was saying, we've laid out lunch for you before you head out into the park. Alejandro, our head chef- -"

"What are they doing?" Alan interrupted curtly. Above them, a massive crane slowly made its way into the pen; in its grip was a plump steer. It was mooing idly, unaware that it was about to meet its maker (or, rather, _meat _its maker). Misty knew what was happening: the poor creature was on the Velociraptors' menu.

"Uh, feeding them," Hammond said. He despised the shadow of horror that eclipsed Doctor Sattler's face as she ogled at the disconcerted steer. Time to distract them, lest he lose Grant's approval for good. "Alejandro is preparing a delightful meal for us. A Chilean sea bass, I believe. Shall we?"

Alan stepped onto the viewing deck, back to the elderly man. He felt Ellie's hand on his own and started rubbing his thumb into the delicate whorls of her joints. She was tense. At his left, Misty set her hands on the railing and bent down, peering past the wide boughs and fronds. All was completely silent.

Suddenly, the crane's wire jerked like a fishing line and there came a blood-curdling squall. The group simultaneously flinched as the vegetation began to shake violently, followed by a sound like someone shredding wet wallpaper. Alan heard and recognized it with a sickening confidence: the sound of flesh being torn. It may not be the prey they were accustomed to, but a steer was meat enough for Velociraptors.

The feral shrieks died away, replaced by a near ethereal silence that only contributed to the horror felt collectively by the group. Misty leaned forward again in the hopes she might be able to see a raptor at work with its meat. What she came face to face with _was _a raptor- - an enraged one. She slammed herself against the wires and yowled as a hot burst of electricity torched her body. Terrified, Misty fell back from the railing and into her father's extended arms. _"Oh, shit."_

Ian didn't bother admonishing her for her language; he simply twisted to Hammond, silently demanding an explanation. "Astonishing jumpers, they are."

"They should all be destroyed," a sonorous voice asserted. A burly, broad-shouldered man dressed in khaki was coming up the staircase, creased face contorted into something of a sneer. Misty, still gripped in the throes of terror, found herself agreeing with his trenchant assessment of the situation.

"Ah, Robert. Robert Muldoon, my game warden from Kenya. Bit of an alarmist, I'm afraid, but he's dealt with the raptors more than anyone," Hammond explained, trying to remain upbeat. Muldoon detected the fabricated cheer in his voice and deduced that something must have gone wrong. No surprise there. Jurassic Park should have been renamed "Nothing-Can-or-Will-Ever-Go-Right Park" to save them the trouble (unfortunately, it just didn't have a nice ring to it).

Grant wasted no time shaking Muldoon's hand. He wanted information on the raptors. "Alan Grant. Tell me, what kind of metabolism do they have? What's their growth rate?"

"They're lethal at eight months and I do mean lethal. I've hunted most things that can hunt you, but the way these things move- -"

"Fast for a biped?"

Muldoon nodded with a certain tiredness that made Misty cast a second glance into the raptor enclosure. They had settled down- - for now. "Cheetah speed. Fifty, sixty miles per hour if they ever got out in the open. And they _are _astonishing jumpers, I'm afraid."

"No kidding," Misty murmured. Ellie squeezed the girl's shoulder before returning to the discussion.

"Yes, yes, yes, which is why we take _extreme _precautions," Hammond insisted. No one listened to him. Muldoon's tempered tales had captivated them.

"Do they show intelligence? With a brain cavity like theirs, I assumed…" Alan gestured for him to confirm this theory. After all, raptors had some of the largest cranial cavities to ever be recorded: he speculated that an adult specimen could have the intelligence of a young human.

"They show extreme intelligence, even problem solving. Especially the big one. We bred eight originally, but when she came in, she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one- - when she looks at you, you can tell she's working things out. She's the reason we have to feed 'em like this." He pointed to the crane still poised over their heads. "She had them all attacking the fences when the feeders came."

"But the fences are electrified," Ellie said.

"That's right. But they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fence for weaknesses. Systemically. They remembered." His voice had taken on a grim note that did not bode well with his audience, especially Misty. She held onto her father's arm and continued to look down at the cage, feeling vaguely sick with fear.

The wire jolted again and began to reel itself back into the crane. What was once a healthy steer was now nothing more than a bloodied harness, barely held together by tatters of cerulean plastic and broken rods. Not a scrap of meat remained.

"Well!" Hammond exclaimed. "Who's hungry?"

.

.

By the time Misty was seated in the darkened dining room, she had lost her appetite. Between the memory of the gory harness and the long drags she had taken from her inhaler, she still felt a little sick and definitely less enthusiastic than she had been a mere hour ago. It certainly didn't help that the entrée being served was beef. She shuddered and shoved it away.

The dining room was a wide, shadowy space, furnished with a long oak table and a glassy buffet the color of polished onyx. A projector beamed sun-drenched images of future projects onto the far wall; John Hammond's pre-recorded voice described various rides through overhead speakers. Two waiters served the last of the dishes and graciously left the guests to their meal.

Hammond gestured to a slide of a potential aviary, which depicted a happy family watching pterodactyls circle around a glass dome. "None of these attractions have been finished yet. The park will open with the basic tour you're about to take and then the other rides will come on line after six or twelve months. Spectacular designs. Spared no expense."

_ Bastard, _Ian thought. He glanced at his daughter and, after fretting over how pale she still was, held up four fingers. She smiled. Hammond had spouted that particular phrase four times now.

Gennaro had expected dinosaurs- - the horror stories he had heard were evidence enough- - but this was beyond anything he could have imagined. InGen had brought the beasts back to life and with extraordinary sights came extraordinary prices. "And we can charge anything you want! Two thousand a day, ten thousand a day, and people will pay it! And then, of course, there's the merchandising- -"

"Donald, Donald, this park was not built only to cater to the super rich. Everyone in the world's got a right to enjoy this park," Hammond said. Misty had to admit that she admired his benevolence. She knew her family could never afford a ten thousand dollar park ticket: in fact, there wasn't a single family she knew that could cough up that much.

"Sure, they will, they will. We'll have a-a coupon day or something." Gennaro laughed as if he had said something of remarkable hilarity and Hammond joined in; the others merely eyed them with joint dislike.

Ian shook his head at the two men and snorted in derision, attracting their attention. "Th-The lack of humility before nature that's been displayed here staggers me."

_ Oh, good. Dad's five-o'-clock rant, right on time. _Misty folded her arms and got comfortable. With everything he had witnessed today, her father would have more than his fair share of insight to share.

"Thank you, Doctor Malcolm," Gennaro deadpanned, beady eyes trained on the man in question, "but I think things are a little different than you and I feared."

"Yeah, I know. They're a lot worse."

The lawyer's brow seemed to gain a fresh layer of wrinkles. "Now, wait a second, we haven't even seen the park yet. Let's just hold our concerns until- -"

"Alright Donald, alright, just let him talk. I want to hear all viewpoints, I truly do," Hammond said. He gave Ian a warm smile, which Ian did not return.

"Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force ever seen on this planet. But you wield it like a kid whose found his dad's gun." Misty was surprised by his analogy: she hadn't thought of InGen's work that way at all. They had seemed so confident… so certain that nothing horrible could occur if they moved around enough cash and hired enough specialists.

Hammond attempted to offer a rebuttal, but Ian beat him to it. "If I may… I'll tell you why. The problem with scientific power you've used is it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don't take the responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you knew what you had, you patented it, packaged it, slapped in on a plastic lunch box, and now you want to sell it. You're selling it." He slammed his fist against the tabletop to emphasize his point. Misty could tell he was just getting started.

"You don't give us our due credit," Hammond accused. "Our scientists have done things no one else could ever do before."

Ian rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb towards the laboratory that had visited earlier. "Your _scientists _were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they _should!"_

Hammond swallowed his resentment and struggled to remain composed in the presence of his female visitors. "Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction…"

"No, no, no… hold on, this is no species that was obliterated about deforestation or-or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs, uh, had their shot and nature selected them for selection." Misty inadvertently looked over at Doctor Grant. To her surprise, the emotion he was communicating was not devastating hatred: it was genuine interest. Doctor Alan Grant was actually listening to her father without holding a blade to his neck.

"I-I don't understand this Luddite attitude, especially from a scientist. How could we stand in the light of discovery and not act?"

Malcolm snorted again, this time with a condescending grin that made Hammond's blood boil. "What's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery… _I _call rape of the natural world."

Ellie was tired of their dry banter and leaned in before another angry remark could be made. "Well, the question is- - how much can you know about an extinct ecosystem, and therefore, how could you assume you could control it? I mean, you have plants here that are _poisonous_. You picked them because they looked good, but these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they're in and will defend themselves. Violently, if necessary."

Inspired by Ellie's excellent point, Misty spoke up. "She's right. There've been textbooks and studies, sure, but these were just theories. No one really knows what these creatures are like or what they'll do- - not even your scientists. Mister Hammond, if these creatures aren't regulated, if they aren't studied, something's going to go wrong. Horribly wrong. Someone could get hurt and-and then… well, I don't know what you would do."

Exasperated, Hammond turned to the only person who had kept his opinion to himself. "Doctor Grant… if there's one person who can appreciate all this."

Grant shifted, as if Hammond had roused him from a doze, and slowly shook his head. He had absorbed too much information in the past few minutes to have an eloquent response prepared. "The world has just… changed so radically and we're all struggling to keep up. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but look… Dinosaurs and man- - two species separated by sixty-five million years of evolution- - have just been suddenly thrown in the mix together. Really- - how can we have the faintest idea of what to expect?"

Hammond surveyed his table of guests again, flabbergasted by their abrupt reluctance. He chuckled darkly and shook his head, wide-eyed. "I don't believe it! I expected you to come down here and defend me from these characters and the only one I've got on my side is the _blood-_sucking lawyer!"

Gennaro seemed simultaneously offended and elated. "Thank you."

One of the waiters stepped back into the dining room and leaned down to whisper in Hammond's ear. In an instant, the elderly man's affronted expression was replaced by one of grandfatherly affection. He laughed to himself and stood up.

"They're here."

**a/n: **Oh my godddd this is so long and boring and awful, but I REALLY think this part of the movie- - though important- - is kind of a drag. I think I got fucking carpal tunnel from all this fucking typing. I know Misty didn't get as much attention in this one, but I really wanted to focus on some other characters and start exploiting Hammond as a darker, more controlling figure than as he's portrayed in the film. so yooo next chapter will have more Misty and more cute Murphy kids. Thanks for the favorites and review, I love you guys.


	4. Chapter Four: Flaws

Chapter Four:

Flaws

**a/n: **it's a-me! we're finally going to get to the good stuff (a.k.a. dinosaurs). I hope everyone watched "Jurassic Park" when it was on amc this weekend and wept at all the appropriate scenes.

"You're kidding me. You've got to be kidding me!"

Misty Malcolm, still hungry and a tad riled up from the verbal altercation she had partaken in, watched as the lawyer's already ruddy complexion became downright Bardolphian with fury. He had practically latched himself onto John Hammond and was barking into the elderly man's ear like a deranged drill sergeant. It was quite entertaining, even if she didn't know why Donald Gennaro was about to decapitate Hammond.

"You made a great point back there, sweetie." Misty glanced up and immediately blushed as she found herself face to face with Doctor Sattler. Speech alluded her.

"Uh… uh, uh- - thank you. Thank you, but- - wow, I was just latching onto-onto your comment about the, uh, the extinct ecosystem, how there's no way to control it," Misty stammered, painfully aware of her own ineptness. She turned the corner, still step in step with the older woman, and looked down at the lower level. The Tyrannosaurus model seemed oddly fragile from above, as if a single mote of dust could obliterate it.

"Don't doubt yourself, Misty. You're very smart. We need more girls like you who aren't afraid to like science," Ellie said with a near imperceptible sigh of resentment. She had seen far too many female spirits snuffed out over the course of her life. If she hadn't lowered her head and dug in her heels, she would have joined the score of girls too disturbed by the male monopoly on science and math to pursue their dreams.

Ellie heard voices rising ahead of them. She smiled grimly at the girl and squeezed her shoulder matronly. "We better see what the trouble is."

"Yeah…" Misty said. In that moment, she would have boarded the next helicopter back to California if it meant Ellie Sattler could become her new stepmother.

The two women returned to the group, or, rather, Gennaro and Hammond brawling passionately while Alan and Ian maintained a safe distance. "You told me this was a business trip! Not a-a… vacation! You think this is a game? I could _ruin _InGen, John! One phone call! One phone call and you'd be ruined!"

Hammond slammed his cane down with enough force to snap the sturdy thing in half. "Oh- - come off it, Donald! What harm are two children going to cause? Their parents are going through a nasty divorce- - I even told you that!- - and I thought they could use a fun weekend to distract them! And you would never ruin InGen, would you? My company's been writing your checks, haven't they? Don't bite the hand that feeds you, my dear boy."

_ Children? Two children? Here? _Misty twisted to the front doors, which were promptly thrust open by none other than Hammond's grandchildren. The prospect of sharing her experience with a pair of spoiled kids curled her lip in revulsion. Dealing with children beyond the realm of her half-siblings was not exactly a hobby of hers.

"Grandpa!" The blond siblings nimbly dashed up the spiral staircase and all but tackled their exceedingly frail grandfather. Misty had a horrible vision of John Hammond breaking every bone in his body. Hammond didn't seem to mind their excitement though; he enveloped the children and pressed their heads to his chest with unprecedented affection. No sooner had they received their hugs did the two begin to prattle on exuberantly.

"We missed you!" the girl exclaimed. She looked about twelve and was wearing a violet Mets cap; the fabric was still starchy with newness.

"Thank you for the presents, Grandpa!" her brother added. He was younger, around eight or nine, and had a thick, glossy book clutched in one hand.

"Yeah, we loved the presents! They were great!"

Misty snuck a glimpse of her traveling companions: Alan Grant was staring down at the family reunion with palpable contempt, while his fiancée beamed. Ian smirked down at his dismayed daughter and gave her unruly ponytail a playful yank. "Look, Misty. Bastard Extraordinaire ordered you some friends."

She contorted her visage into a rictus of unparalleled agony. "Father of mine. Please tell me that these children will be sent to bed soon because, so help me, if I'm enrolled to entertain them, I'll probably saddle up a Velociraptor and order fire on this place. Not kidding. Not even kidding."

"You love kids," Ian insisted as they began to make their way down the steps. "Everyone does."

"And everyone loves cupcakes, even though they clog your arteries and, eventually, induce death. I like Kelly and Roger because I have to, and because I'm slowly- - but surely!- - corrupting Roger with a love for dinosaurs." Misty held the front door open for Ian and consulted her digital wristwatch. Almost five. She briefly wondered if their resort accommodations would be half as opulent as the Visitor's Center. It had been years since she had stayed anywhere beyond the realm of embarrassingly shabby motels.

Ian grabbed his daughter by her broad shoulders and shook her gently. "You _love _them. Or, at least, you're going to."

"What do you mean?" She peered at the railed stretch of dirt road winding around the Visitor's Center and, eventually, into the verdant jungle. Two ostentatious Land Cruisers made their way up the track, both without drivers. Misty watched the two insufferably endearing children explore the vehicles and had a sudden, atrocious thought. "Dad, please tell me you're not gonna do what I think you're gonna do."

"Sorry, honey." He dropped a kiss on her brow.

"Please! I won't make a sound! I just want to hear what they have to say about the park!" Misty begged. The note of desperation in her own voice disgusted her, but she had never been one to avoid a dramatic moment. She clasped her hands together as if possessed by some religious spirit and threw herself against him. _"Please!"_

"On the way back, maybe. But I've got important business things to do." _Like make sure Doctor Sattler has some company in case her boyfriend swoons again at the sight of a big lizard._

Misty pouted unabashedly and thundered down the building's front steps. She had been anticipating a mature, intelligent conversation with the doctors as they toured the park, not awkward silence with a pair of kids. Not to mention the lawyer, whose company was no more pleasant than having one's teeth drilled.

She climbed into the first Jeep's driver's seat and immediately began rummaging through her backpack for the book she had brought- - Doctor Grant's book, to be exact. It was her favorite among her tomes on the subject. His perspective on the creatures was so novel and intuitive, which, in itself, was like a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stuffy and stagnant paleontology world. Having his words guide her through the park would be almost as wonderful as being the in the same car as him.

_ Almost._

The CD-ROM began to reiterate programmed instructions in a man's soothing tenor. "Please do not exit the vehicle until the tour is complete and the vehicle has come to a complete stop. Please keep arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Children under the age of ten should be accompanied by an adult."

"That's you," the girl said from the backseat, poking her brother. Misty made a mental note to at least learn their names during their time together.

"Jesus… just like Disney World," Gennaro remarked.

"Stop it, Lex!"

"Oh, come on Timmy, I'm just kidding."

Misty had a distinct vision of her younger self buckled into the backseat of her third stepmother's minivan and engaged in a strikingly similar argument with her half-sister, Kelly. That particular squabble had gone on for the better part of a half hour and could have persisted had their stepmother not threatened to confiscate everything they loved and held dear. She briefly wondered if such a punishment held any weight around here.

The pair of Jeeps roared to life: it was time to go. Finally! A rush of jubilancy unparalleled by any of her museum trips or lecture tapes swept through Misty and she felt herself quivering with anticipation. She reached into her pocket for her inhaler, nervously fingering its nozzle as the vehicle prepared itself for the journey ahead.

"What kind of dinosaurs are we going to see now?" Lex was saying from the backseat (yes! Misty had gotten their names without any awkward prying).

The steering wheel twisted on its programmed axle and the Land Cruiser complied. "Hey, lookit!" Tim exclaimed. "A ghost!"

"Oh, no! It's driving!"

They rounded the corner at a leisurely pace, allowing the guests just enough time to agonize over what they would see. The roadway's track rattled like a roller coaster's cart as it ascended the first and highest peak. Gennaro examined the contemporary CD-ROM and self-operating wheel, and laughed uncertainly. "Wake up and join the future, right?"

Misty didn't bother supplying an answer. They were approaching the front gates.

Two wooden slabs, framed by wicker torches ablaze with synthetic flames, appeared on the horizon. Above it in orange letters- - Jurassic Park. The set-up was vaguely surreal: like the façade to a Disney World ride instead of the only thing separating seven people from a veritable land before time. As if sensing its occupants' enthusiasm, the Jeeps lulled forward and sped toward the gates, which opened in compliance.

They were in the park.

"Voicing your tour is Richard Kiley! Spared no expense!" Hammond exclaimed from the car's dashboard speaker. His voice was tinny and distant. Misty wondered why he hadn't accompanied them on the tour. Perhaps dinosaurs had lost a bit of magic for him, had become as common as field horses or milk cows. The thought saddened her greatly. Once the park was opened to the public, dinosaurs would no longer be creatures of mystery and majesty. They would become entirely and incurably ordinary.

That didn't stop her from twisting around in her seat and peering into the interior of the rear Jeep. Her father was holding up five fingers.

"To your right, you will see a herd of the first dinosaurs on our tour. They're called Dilophosaurus," Richard Kiley announced, sounding remarkably unimpressed. His listeners, however, immediately descended into a child-like state of fervor.

Gennaro, who had been rambling about the safety issues to whoever would listen, was nearly crushed by Misty as she hurled herself against the passenger window. One knee pinning the man to his seat, she pressed her hands against the glass and peered into the enclosure. They had stopped on a low rise, which ran astride to a leafy plain bordered by tall, wide-armed trees. A sliver of a brook babbled tranquilly through it.

In the rear Jeep, Alan dropped his map at the mention of Dilophosaurus and shared a brief celebratory gasp with Ellie. They both rushed to the windows. Ian spared the empty pen a passing glance before reaching into his pocket and extracting his silver flask. He was in for a long tour.

"Miss Malcolm? Your knee?" Gennaro said curtly. She blushed at her carelessness and removed the offending joint before consulting the window again. "What're we looking for?"

"Dilophosaurus," Tim replied. He was elbowing Lex for a decent view and she wouldn't move, even though she had told him in the helicopter she didn't even like dinosaurs. "Move, Lex!"

"You move!"

"Guys…" Misty warned. For a moment, she had entirely forgotten that the children in the backseat weren't Kelly and Roger. It amazed her how kids could have the exact same argument, no matter what the circumstances.

A view of the enclosure wasn't the issue, however: there were no Dilophosaurus in sight. Misty adjusted her glasses and scanned the treetops where the species occasionally gathered. Nothing. The ground was free of claw prints, the earth undisturbed. "Damn… there's no sign of 'em."

Grant had also come to the realization that there was neither hide nor hair of Dilophosaur to be found. What a shame, too. He had always wanted to see one and compare their height to a Compy. To his disappointment, the Land Cruisers began to trundle away from the pen and towards their next destination. "Damn!" he said, slamming his palm against the paneling.

"It's okay, honey. Maybe next time."

.

.

"Vehicle headlights are running and don't respond. Those shouldn't be running off the car's battery."

Raymond Arnold tapped his pen against the fingerprint-clouded screen of his monitor and shook his head in awe. "Item one-fifty-two on today's glitch list. We've got all the problems of a major theme park _and _a major zoo, and the computer's not even on its feet yet."

The Visitor Center was home to an impressively well-equipped Control Room, which- - in turn- - was home to Ray Arnold, Dennis Nedry, and, at the moment, Hammond and Muldoon. Arnold was no stranger to Hammond, who could write all sorts of zeroes on a check, but Muldoon's visits were increasingly few and far between. It was a shame too: Arnold could at least tolerate Muldoon. Nedry on the other hand…

Arnold and Nedry were as different as any two men could be. Where Arnold was thin and swarthy, Nedry was overweight and pale, especially in the Control Room's dim overhead light. Of course, there was also the issue of personality: Arnold liked to keep to himself, while Nedry had no qualms in sharing exactly what was on his mind with Hammond. Today- - Showcase Day, no less- - was no exception.

"Nedry… our lives are in your hands and you have butter fingers?" Hammond asked disapprovingly. When lecturing, the elderly man sounded more like a sitcom father than the CEO of the world's largest bioengineering corporation.

The large man turned in his rubber-padded swivel chair and tossed his employer a sarcastic chuckle. "I'm totally unappreciated in my time! We can run the whole park from this room, with minimal staff, for up to three days. You think that kinda automation is easy? Or cheap? You know anybody who can network eight connection machines and debug two million lines of code for what I bid for this job? 'Cause if you can, I'd love to see you try!"

Hammond, who was perched on the carpeted staircase leading out of the room and up into the touring theater, ascended another step so he could have the height advantage in the situation. "I'm sorry about your financial problems Dennis- - I really am- - but they are _your _problems."

"Oh, you're right John, you're absolutely right!" Nedry laughed dryly. "Everything's my problem."

The man's cane came down with a familiar clunk. "I will not get drawn into another financial debate with you, Dennis. I really will not."

"Hardly any debate at all… my mistakes…"

"I don't blame people for their mistakes. But I do ask that they pay for them."

Nedry rolled his eyes and toasted his Coke to Hammond. "Thanks, Dad."

Arnold waited for the show to conclude before rolling himself around the ledge of his desk. "Dennis. The headlights."

He excused his co-worker with a nonplussed wave of his hand. "Yeah, I'll debug the tour program when they get back, okay?" Nedry noticed Arnold's agitated expression and soured. "Okay?! It'll eat a lot of computer cycles; parts of the system may go down for a while- - don't blame me. If I am playing… losing my memory…"

"Quiet, all of you!" Muldoon snapped from the video monitors. Onscreen, the pair of Jeeps were creeping towards a rather familiar fence. "They're approaching the Tyrannosaur paddock."

.

.

"The mighty Tyrannosaurus arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for a hundred and fifty million years, but it wasn't until the last- -"

"Will you shut that damn thing off?" Alan demanded. He had known what paddock it was before the Jeeps had even ascended the high ridge overlooking the grassy plains and gnarled, prehistoric trees. The road and vegetation were divided by a fifteen foot high fence bedecked in ominous "DANGER!" signs and electrical alarms planted every few yards.

Ellie flipped the CD-ROM's switch, plunging the vehicle into tense silence. Ian appreciated the sudden lack of Richard Kiley and used the lull to his advantage. Ticking the thoughts on his fingers, he mused aloud. "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs…"

"Dinosaurs… _eat _man. Woman inherits the Earth," Ellie concluded confidently. Her male traveling companions acknowledged her with appropriately frightened expressions. Pleased with their reaction, she moved past them for a better view of the Rex enclosure.

The radio crackled. "Hold on," Arnold said, "we'll try to tempt the Rex."

In the paddock, the artificial earth opened up and a small crate was hydraulically lifted from underground storage. Once out in the open, the cage's bars slid down into their slots and its occupant, a plump goat, was left to its own devices. The baffled creature was tied to a stake and bleating plaintively.

Once Lex saw just what was being delivered to the Rex, she felt a flutter of panic. "What's gonna happen to him? Is it gonna eat the goat?!"

Tim was in heaven. "Excellent!"

"What's the matter, kid?" Gennaro asked absently as he gazed at the display with quiet intrigue. "Never had lamb chops before?"

Lex lifted her chin, silently demanding at least a fraction of respect. "I _happen _to be a vegetarian."

Misty smiled. She had once attempted vegetarianism, only to be swayed back into an omnivore lifestyle once it was explicated that her options were limited to leftover meatloaf or nothing. Besides, her family subsisted on ham sandwiches. "It'll be okay. The Rex'll probably just get it in one gulp. No blood or anything."

All of the color had drained from Lex's face.

In the rear Jeep, Alan was growing impatient again. The dearth of Dilophosaurus could be tolerated, but Hammond had promised them a T-Rex and- - dammit!- - he wanted a T-Rex. Once he gave the subject some thought though, the Rex's absence was obvious. "T-Rex doesn't want to be fed. It wants to hunt."

His observation couldn't be debated. After all, the Rex was, indeed, a no show. Even the goat had laid down in boredom. When the Jeeps finally pulled away, everyone was jointly disillusioned and more than a little irritated by the tour so far. Ian seemed to be the only one not upset. "Ahh… You see? The Tyrannosaur doesn't follow set patterns or park schedules. It's the essence of Chaos."

Ellie turned in the passenger seat and faced him. If she couldn't see dinosaurs, Ian's pleasantly benign rambling would serve well as a time-killer between exhibits. "Ya know, I'm still not clear on Chaos."

_ I've blinded her with Chaos, _Ian thought proudly. "Oh, oh- - it simply deals with unpredictability in complex situations. It's only principle is-is the Butterfly Effect. A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine."

The blonde woman stared blankly at her new teacher a moment before waving a hand over her head. _"Whoosh!"_

He chuckled and lovingly fondled one of her soft bangs. "Did I- - I did a fly by, I went too fast. Here- - hand me that big glass of water. We're gonna conduct an experiment." Ian took the plastic cup, dipped a fingertip into its tepid depths, and took Ellie's smooth hand in his own. "Make like hieroglyphics. Now watch the way the drop of water falls on your hand."

The minute droplet quavered, then slid down her hilt and through the valley of her knuckles. Both were so focused on the water that they failed to notice Grant sit bolt upright. A bulky figure was outstretched in the fields they were passing, something decidedly inhuman.

Malcolm mentally catalogued the direction of the drop and wetted his finger again. "Ready? Freeze your hand. Now I'm going to do the same thing from the exact same place. Which way is the drop going to roll off?"

"Uh… same way." This time, the bead rolled onto her thumb.

"It changed. And why? Because, and here is the principle of tiny variations- - the orientations of the hairs- -"

"Alan, listen to this!" Ellie insisted. Her fiancé continued to stare out the window, trying to distinguish the shape and ignore the grandiose flirting taking place next to him.

"- - on your hand, the amount of blood distending in your vessels, imperfections in your skin- -"

She giggled and tilted her head. "Oh, imperfections?"

"Microscopic- - never repeat, and vastly affect the outcome. That's what?"

"Unpredictability?"

He took her hand and pulled out the heaviest artillery in his "charming arsenal". At this rate, he'd be escorting her back to California. "And even if we haven't seen it yet, I'm quite sure it's going on in this park right now."

Alan had endured enough of Ian's complete and utter bullshit, as well as agonizing over what was sprawled out in the unfenced grazing area. He opened his door and leapt out of the moving vehicle without bothering to ensure he wasn't being watched. Ian laughed uproariously as the paleontologist bolted towards the brush. "There! See? I'm right again!"

He hadn't really been that envious. Had he? Alan had never been the jealous type: sullen and prone to glowering, sure, but not one to challenge any man who dared to lay their eyes on her. After all, abandoning the Jeep was downright theatrical. "Alan? Alan!"

Ian watched, amused, as Ellie climbed over the seats and followed Alan into the green beyond. "There's another example! See? Here I am now, by myself, talking to myself- - that-that's the Chaos Theory. I'm the only one who knows what's going on…"

Oh, well. It was rather lonely without Ellie's company. He jumped out rather gracefully, considering the recent and copious amount of alcohol he had poured into his system, and was met by Misty. She was far too caught up in the drama to detect the inebriated glint in his dark eyes. "What's going on, Dad? The kids said they saw Doctor Grant jump out- - what'd you say?! Did you actually drive a man to jump out of a moving car?"

"I think he saw something nerdy and lost his shit, honey." Ian grabbed his daughter by the hand and tailed after the group. She tugged him along until they were in step with Doctor Grant, who was moving along like a demented man. They weren't the only ones eager to catch up with him.

Tim broke away from his sister and hurried over to the doctor in the hopes he wouldn't be shut out yet again. "So there's this _other _book by this guy named Bakker and he says that the dinosaurs died of a bunch of diseases. He definitely didn't say they turned to birds."

"Anyone else think we shouldn't be out here?" Gennaro called out from the pack's rear. The rocky path they were traversing seemed abandoned and if Hammond caught them trespassing, the outcome would probably be less than pleasant (not to mention nonrefundable). Once again, he was totally snubbed; the group pressed onwards.

"And his book was a lot fatter than yours, it was like- - this." Tim held out Grant's own text as a demonstration. Grant made a noise of disinterest.

"Yours was fully illustrated, honey," Ellie reminded him.

Lex stumbled over a tree root that had squirmed out of the earth and almost fell. Grant seized her forearm intuitively, keeping her on her feet. "You okay?"

The girl glanced down at their fingers, which had become intertwined, and beamed widely. Ellie and Misty caught one another's attention, their eyes communicating what needn't be said: _He's quite popular among the Murphys, isn't he? _

"Whoa, whoa… everyone stay here." Alan wrestled his hand free of Lex's grip and advanced toward the mysterious creature partially buried in the tall, wind-weathered grass. Not even three seconds passed before Tim started after him, deaf to his sister's objections. He waded through the foliage and saw the figment for what it was- - a Triceratops.

He was looking down at a living, breathing Triceratops.

**a/n: ***throws keyboard out the window* OH MY GOD. Jesus Christ, the last part of this chapter was basically scene-to-page and it was awful and oh my GOD please excuse this chapter, pretend this shit never happened, because I literally only care about what occurs after the T-Rex attack. Oh my God, I'm not even going to edit this I'm just going to bury myself instead k bye


End file.
